“No, I no longer want to talk about the island and Greece. It was a difficult, sad time. Now I want to start a new life,” Baidaa S, who now lives in Germany, told NZZ reporters.
The Swiss Neue Zürcher Zeitung is dealing with the case of Baidaa S., the main “source” of the reports of the magazine “Der Spiegel” about the – as it turned out – non-existent incident of the death of a child in the Evros. According to the newspaper, the German magazine, “instead of honestly coming to terms with its own failures, continues to deceive the public to this day.”
Spiegel was recently forced to take down three articles and a podcast about a “refugee drama” because they were based on fabricated stories, the Zurich paper pointed out in a particularly lengthy op-ed. “One question remains: are the creators of Germany’s best-selling and most-quoted top media simply naive or are they deliberately hiding the fact that they were deceived by a witness who was more fanciful than reliable?” writes the newspaper, which attempted to speak with Baidaa S. after locating her in a rural area of Rhineland-Palatinate, but the 27-year-old refused. “No, I no longer want to talk about the island and Greece. It was a difficult, sad time. Now I want to start a new life,” he told NZZ reporters.
Exactly how Baidaa S. became involved in the case remains unclear, the newspaper points out, but it explains that the young woman, who appeared on social media as a cosmopolitan “Influencer”, suddenly found herself last August asking for help on behalf of 38 refugees who were supposed to have been stranded helpless on the island of Evros. “It is the beginning of an international campaign against the EU’s migration policy (…) Spiegel is talking about a pan-European crime,” referring to alleged pushbacks by Greece. “In this case a girl named Maria died from a scorpion bite because EU services did not offer help,” NZZ points out, referring to the German magazine’s report.
NZZ also explains that “Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan regularly threatens Greece with war, using the millions of migrants and Syrian refugees as leverage against the EU” and adds that “according to rescue teams, traffickers repeatedly create emergencies in order to to persuade the authorities to intervene, e.g. with babies who are supposed to be sick, when they are healthy” and that “NGOs promoting the unconditional right to migrate often present migrant statements as fact and journalists in turn treat these narratives as research”.
Baidaa S. was in contact with Greek NGOs and the lawyer of one of these organizations put her in touch with the correspondent of Spiegel, reports the report and lists the question marks arising from the coverage of the case. As she says, Baidaa S. disappeared a day before the arrival in Greece of the group of immigrants she represented. How was he able to leave Greece, just as an asylum seeker? Was he a refugee in the summer of 2022 or was he faking it for the media? “Her name is not even on a list of refugees sent to the European Court of Human Rights,” her supposed grandmother she was talking about in video messages did not exist, just as little Maria, who supposedly died on the island, probably does not exist either. writes NZZ and points to Spiegel’s attempt to control the scandal with all kinds of maneuvers and present the case as a “sad failure”.
On December 30, 2022, the journal publishes its explanations. “The articles should have been worded more carefully,” Spiegel wrote. “The deputy director of international news turned the refugees’ statements into facts, no one checked them”, NZZ objects, referring to “one of the biggest fake news cases since the time of the scandal with Klaas Relotius (s. ex-editor of Spiegel , who in 2018 admitted that in at least 14 articles he had distorted facts or fabricated statements)”. He also notes that the magazine’s correspondent in Greece had been “following” Baidaa S. on Instagram, but apparently hadn’t noticed anything about her past life that didn’t match the woman of last summer, who appeared sullen and unkempt. “There are significant doubts about Baidaa S’s credibility,” the Swiss newspaper continues, adding that even the NGO Humanrights 360, which had briefed the media on the Evros case, eventually publicly distanced itself from the Spiegel report. . Furthermore, when NZZ asked Spiegel, “why Baidaa S. is still mentioned in its report as a witness,” the magazine simply cited “the protection of whistleblowers and sources” in not responding.
NZZ’s report closes with a question the paper put to Baidaa S. about her grandmother, for whom she was supposedly asking for help. The 70-year-old should be in Greece, according to what the young woman said at the time. “My grandmother is not in Greece yet,” he replied.
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